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In 1848 the outdated association of cantons that made up the Swiss confederation was replaced by a modern, democratic, federal state; at the same time an extremely talented generation of new young artists began to make a name for itself. The distinctive regional interpretation of international realism found in the work of Anker, Böcklin, Buchser, Koller, Stückelberg, and Zünd amongst others allowed them to break out of the hitherto marginalised status of Swiss art to join the mainstream of European painting. Whilst the subject matter for their art may be regional it nonetheless embodies within it the universal: the Gotthard Post hurtles down a pass that had been open only a few decades, and where for centuries previously only the leisurely plod of cattle hooves had been heard: Koller’s famous painting, The Gotthard Post, is an allegory of the speed of the modern and the tension between old and new.